As an aspiring or working illustrator, I’m sure you also spend quite a bit of time on the web looking at other illustrators’ websites. Have you noticed how easy some illustrators sites are to navigate around and how others are just confusing and make it hard to get to the actual illustrations?
If you think about that from an Art Director’s perspective - all things being equal regarding the quality of work, who do you think they are going to hire?
From a few years experience of designing websites for clients (and from being an avid surfer of other illustrators sites), here are a few things to keep in mind when creating an effective website for your illustration portfolio…
Avoid Flash
How often have you gone to a website and been so frustrated with the endless dancing graphics and animated intros that you have just closed the site down and moved on?
It’s tempting to use Flash to give your website an ultra modern, slick feel but remember the purpose of your website is to showcase your artwork, not your coding ability!
Art Directors hate flash - they are extremely busy people, if they have to wait for flash graphics to load before they get to your actual work – they will simply move on.
Navigation and The 3 Click Rule
All of the web pages and content information on your website (especially your portfolio and contact details) should be easily reached in no more than 3 clicks from one set of navigation.
Avoid the temptation to have layers and layers of navigation and pages or Art Directors will get lost in your site and quickly lose interest.
Do you really need that splash page? What does it achieve? If an AD can’t find what they’re looking for within a few seconds, they will give up and go elsewhere.
A good (bad?) example of this is Jon Van Fleets website - I’m a huge fan of his work but can’t bear the hard work it takes to actually find the illustrations on his website. Imagine if he were just starting out in illustration, how many Art Directors would take the time to trawl through his site just to find samples of his work?
Ensure Each Image Has A URL (that can be linked to)
Art Directors will often need to highlight certain images that they want to come back to for their own purposes or to forward to other departments. Make this easy by ensuring each image in your portfolio has a unique URL.
Don’t use fancy display devices that make them have to scroll through your whole portfolio each time they want to find a specific image.
Include Your Contact Details
Be sure to make your contact details easy to find on your site with a simple ‘Contact Me’ page - don’t miss out on commissions just because an AD has to dig deep into your site to find out how to get in touch or even worse, by not even including them on your site (this does happen!).
Overall, when you are creating your portfolio website, just be sensible. Put yourself in the shoes of a busy Art Director: Is the path through your site clear? Can a visitor find everything that an AD would need/want to see easily?
Leave the self-indulgence to one side for a minute and think hard about the end user and their experience of your website.